Monitoring is changing legal clinics. This is reconfirmed by the monitoring updated version implementation. Monitoring “2.0.” Chernihiv National University of Technology “Adiutorium” legal clinic showed a great example of team cohesion and responsibility of the legal clinic manager.
On February 14, 2020, the monitoring group identified 7 areas of development of the legal clinic. Exactly 2 months later, we gathered the team of the legal clinic, the faculty administration and representatives of partner organizations for an online meeting to discuss the results of the work on the implementation of the Plan.
What tasks were put in front of the legal clinic?
From the side of the university administration find the optimal form of financial incentives for work in a legal clinic. Due to quarantine and structural changes at the University, where the legal clinic operates, we got a monitoring rate of 20%. It is worth noting that the management of the faculty provides maximum assistance in this area, so I am sure that next academic year we will have a clear example of a decent assessment of work in a legal clinic.
Approve the new Regulations on the legal clinic, which would correspond to the modern LC features. After examining the Standard Regulations on Legal Clinic, developed by the Association and examples of regulations of other legal clinics – members of the Association, an up-to-date Regulation was developed and prepared for approval, which reflects the structure and functional responsibilities of legal clinic staff. So we have 75% fulfillment of this issue of the plan.
Introduce accounting of advisory work of teachers-curators in the legal clinic. During the monitoring, it was noted that most of the work in the legal clinic is performed by the head of the legal clinic, but for effective work and elimination of burnout, it is necessary to involve other teachers and systematize the accounting of their work. Systematization and proper documentation of the work of teachers-curators allowed to perform this task 100%;
Create conditions for effective communication with clients and access to legal databases. Material equipment and procurement is often a painful issue for universities, but without the most necessary means it is impossible to organize effective work. Unfortunately, this direction of the plan has not been implemented, but we remain it as mandatory in the near future;
Provide more meaningful advice to clients of the legal clinic. The evaluation of the new consultations of the legal clinic indicates their significant substantive improvement, which is supported by the regular publication of the consultations of the legal clinic on the website of the Association. Therefore, it is a pleasure to state 100% for the improved quality of consultations provided in the legal clinic.
To increase the activity of students-consultants. Training sessions with law clinic students are a very important component of its quality work. Under the conditions of quarantine, the legal clinic managed to fulfill the plan in this area by 40%. However, legal clinics must be innovative and mobile in their work, so I appeal to all legal clinics – members of the Association: do not forget about your clinicians, use quarantine to their advantage, teaching them remotely through specialized online platforms or recommend students to undergo specialized on-online courses or webinars;
Improve the records of the legal clinic. Record keeping is an important element of systematic workю In this direction we managed to ensure 100% of effectiveness and efficiency of forms for consultations accounting, work of students and teachers.
So, we have an overall result of the plan – 62.9%, but this is not the end of our work on the development of the Chernihiv National University of Technology “Adiutorium” legal clinic. New ideas and their successful implementation are ahead, so I want to end with the impressions of monitoring 2.0. and implementation of the plan from legal clinic head Valentyna Lytvynenko:
“After the completion of the monitoring by the Association of Legal Clinics of Ukraine and the implementation of the plan for further development of our legal clinic, compiled in conjunction with the monitoring group, we can claim that monitoring is a confirmation of the correctly chosen vector of activity of our clinic, revealing of certain facts of conservatism in the decision of some questions, confirmation of presence near people who believe and see sense in our joint activity, and also a provocation to act further, but – more innovatively, more confidently, estimating everything is done and how much it costs and can be done.” “.
Author:
Kateryna Datsko, an expert on the implementation of monitoring recommendations of the Chernihiv National University of Technology ‘Adiutorium’ legal clinic.
The Project “Development of Regional Leaders and the Association of Legal Clinics of Ukraine Coordination Model Enforcement ” is being implemented by the Association of Legal Clinics of Ukraine with the financial support from the International Renaissance Foundation.